the weather this morning is one of brilliant sunshine. we have a quick breakfast (having swapped the walking boots for our normal street shoes yesterday evening the last time on this walk) and then take a taxi out of this car’s paradise (and pedestrian hell) to the station. inside the taxi i’m at first shocked that my clothes seem to smell quite strongly of sweat and appear to permeate the air in the taxi — until i realize that it’s not me but the taxi driver, phew

at dundee station they “currently” have the left luggage facility closed for security reasons, luckily mailboxes etc in union street (just around the corner) does take left luggage (very reasonable £ 3.50 for four hours for both of our bags) and we are off to explore the city, take a look at the — yep! — walks section in the local TIC (and buy a copy of the highland way and also of the glen way & have a cup of tea at the twinned cafe, then head for the RRS discovery — which to our surprise takes up the remainder of our time in dundee: a very interesting exhibition; a bit of a time travel taking you into the spirit and the excitement of the time back then about the royal geographic society’s expedition to antarctica. and it is quite amazing how long the group of explorers survived onboard the RRS discovery frozen in at the south pole — surviving two antarctic winters!

at 15:00 we leave for mailboxes etc, pick up our bags and head for the station to catch the 15:51 from dundee to stirling. the railway ride takes us from coastal dundee to the feet of the highlands and the landscape is slowly changing with it.

as the weather has been getting more cloudy and as on our journey to stirling it has started raining we take a taxi to our b&b in stirling. the ride is short and cheap: £ 1.94

our b&b, number 10, turns out to be a large georgian house in a quiet neighborhood (no wosh-wosh-wosh of the A roads of st michaels or dundee), our landlord is friendly and the room we are shown to is large with two double-sized beds instead of the usual small twins! we feel right at home immediately! i’m particularly looking forward to two good nights sleeps in quiet surroundings after two silicone earplug nights…

we make our way back into town (which is just a five minutes stroll), do some window shopping (but the shops are closed, so we don’t get any), and have dinner at the no 2 pub.

tommorrow we want to do a walk through town and visit the castle.

fantastic “trip to the antarctica”, enjoyed the train trip from dundee to stirling! really nice b&b!